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User blog:Toxictangent/Winter 2016 Progress Log
Prior to the Event January 16th: Researching as much as I can about event preparation. Mocks are also coming up, which is definitely going to put my time management skills to the test. In the meantime, my HQ level is rapidly approaching one that is a prime position to actually clear an event, and it's starting to show in my fleet. I'm pleased with the progress I've had so far, though I get the feeling that I should've started preparing earlier. It's always the case isn't it, hindsight is 20-20. Shouldn't have slacked off that hard over Christmas. In other news, Sendai and Kitakami have risen to Kai Ni. Where's the party poppers? I've also been blessed with a Taihou in my post-event celebratory LSC. I've taken the time to level her and she is sitting solidly in her Kai'd state. You know what this means? I'm no longer CV deficient! I can now safely enter the event with the minimum number of CVs. Looking at the guides, I think that I need to shift my focus back on my BBs. It's good that I've been trying to evenly level the fleet, but I've got to sink some time into my heavy hitters too. I'll need them to deliver! There's no chance that I can craft any of the Nagato class and get them event-ready in time, so I'll just have to work on leveling the ones I have now. February 3rd: Event preparation continues. The spreadsheet I prepared to organise this really helped me to set my goals. Ooi has also joined the Kai Ni club, which will be great if I need to steamroll a-la CLT a few sortie runs. Looking back at my Fall 2015 debrief, it was clear that I needed to Kai Akitsumaru to get the benefits of branching + AS, which I promptly did. She sits happily in base with her Ka-Types, ready to sortie when needed. I also sunk a lot more modfod into my main roster, having them at 4 stars minimum. See? This is why we keep record of such things! I guess it helps that the event starts on the day of my university interview, so I won't be pushing my luck with frontlining this time (It was a foolhardy thing to do, though I didn't experience that much pain doing it!) I've done what I can to get any event specific ships to an event-ready state. Ise and Hyuuga are on standby at level 30, which isn't much I know but it'll do for easy (I hope). Ashigara was part of my main CA roster, so I've had no trouble leveling her. I managed to find a Kasumi while DD leveling in 1-5, and promptly Kai'd her. I'll try to modernise her a little more. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the other event-specific ships. Then again, I only had 3 that were battle-ready for Fall '15 (Jintsuu, Satsuki, and Mikazuki) so perhaps it won't be that much of a loss if I don't have the others. One last goal I have is to train the CAVs. I've been neglecting Mogami for a while, but that's soon to be remedied. Kumano is approaching Kai level, which will be handy in case branching calls for 2 CAVs. I was lucky that there wasn't anything CAV specific that I had to deal with last event, or else I would've been screwed. Event Operations Event Roster and Equipment Inventory: winter 16 equip.JPG|Winter 2016 Equipment Inventory winter 16 dd.JPG|Winter 2016 Destroyer Roster winter 16 cl.JPG|Winter 2016 Light Cruiser Roster winter 16 ca.JPG|Winter 2016 Heavy Cruiser Roster winter 16 cv.JPG|Winter 2016 Standard/Light Carrier Roster winter 16 bb.JPG|Winter 2016 Battleship Roster winter 16 msc.JPG|Winter 2016 Submarine/Auxiliary Roster Day 1 (10th February) True to my word, I have abstained from event operations for today. In other news, my university interview went swimmingly, so I have no regrets in that field. Abstaining from event operations and waiting for the maintenance to finish was easy. Physical separation from my laptop works wonders. I have checked the information as it trickles in from Reddit and the wiki. So far I haven't seen anything useful yet in terms of fleet compositions and branching, but I am very content to peruse the new ship CGs. They look great! I am looking forward to making a concentrated effort in achieving my event goals this time. Day 2 (11th February) Event Operations officially start. As last time showed, E-1 was a piece of cake, despite this being my first time attempting on Normal difficulty. It was a pretty clean sweep: 7 runs for 6 clean kills of the boss, where I had to retreat once due to Shigure getting taiha'd. It was a good thing that I picked Normal, as I managed to get a repair goddess and a medal as well as the other goodies. Hooray! E-2 though... This is where it gets harder. After wrestling with internet connectivity hijinks, I'd managed to get a connection stable enough for sorties. The fleet composition for the easiest route to the boss is pretty light: 1CA, 1CLT, 1CL, 3DD. So far I've had steady progress in bringing the HP bar down to 0, but I haven't managed to get a single clean kill yet (which sucks, because that is all that stands between me and clearing E-2). I've tried brute forcing through the map with 4FBB 2CV, but that has only given me marginal benefits with a lot more repair costs. I've chosen a 'Buckets for Everyone' policy, and I have expended about 30 so far. Not to worry, as my excessive resource and bucket hoarding over the past month has allowed me to spend without worry. I won't make the mistake of desperately LSC'ing this time, so I'll have more to use on sorties. I've just thought of something. I'll swap Ashigara for Maya to give extra AA and firepower. Maybe that'll do the trick. Day 3 (12th February) I spent most of the day out, so I didn't get to sortie today. I did get to meet up with an old friend, which was nice! Day 4 (13th February) Today's sorties started off on a good note. My first run of the day brought the boss down to 5 health, which was a good sign! It meant that my relatively light fleet was capable of killing the boss, if they were able to reduce it to 5 HP! However, the rest of the sorties did not reach that level of damage again until a long time. I tried experimenting with different fleet compositions, but I kept getting rerouted to the southern route (which was more dangerous) instead of the northern one. I learnt that if I have more than one CA on the fleet, it would be an instant south route start, which sucked as I was desperate for more Type 3 Shell carriers to really pummel the boss at night. I did try to brute force my way through with a 4FBB 2CV fleet, but that didn't work as well. Perhaps it was bad RNG, but I only managed to bring the boss to chuuha at night. A concern was that the submarines in Node C were getting free potshots at my fleet, and there were 2 aerial bombardments that were unpredictable in their threat level. I tried switching in 2 DD and 1 CVL to have some ASW, but they got wrecked by the 2 Ta-Class BBs at node G, which promptly flushed that plan down the toilet. I decided to stick with the fleet I used on Day 2. I did some extra research on equipment setups and fleet placings, and found a few things i could tweak. Yuudachi was holding the searchlight, and I learnt that she had to be either flag or 2nd ship for the searchlight to have the best benefit. I promptly placed Sendai as flag and Yuudachi as 2nd ship. I left Kitakami as 3rd, but gave her a Torpedo cut-in setup in hopes that she could nuke the boss at night. Shigure in the 4th slot would be the primer for the cut-in with her star shell. I gave Fubuki a beginner's AACI setup to deal with the aerial bombardment at Node I and to mitigate the damage done by the boss' opening air strike. Maya anchored the fleet with a standard DA setup + Type 3 Shell. I started up a new sortie as usual, noting that the Boss Support had failed to activate twice when I reached the Boss node (would it fail again? It looked to be the start of a resource drain, as it was in Fall 2015 for me). To make things worse, a Ka-class Elite got a lucky hit on Fubuki in the first node, reducing her to chuuha. Things weren't looking too good for this sortie, as she seemed to be 2-3HP from being Taiha'd. I carried on anyway, because it was too early to call it quits (plus the morale penalty wasn't helpful). Plucky Fubuki activated her AACI at Node I, carrying the team to a flawless victory/escape. The real worry came at Node R, where a Ri-class flagship was waiting for a chance to send the fleet home. With poor Fubuki struggling on at 9 HP, I had already prepared to retreat and prepare for another sortie. However, the fleet pulled through and swept the abyssals, sinking the Ri-class in the closing torpedo stage. Sure enough, the sneaky bastard had aimed for Fubuki in the closing torp, but she dodged it handily. Way to go Fubuki, you're a real champ. After a close encounter with the PT Imps, the fleet finally arrived at the Boss. Fubuki activated her AACI again in the opening air strike, saving everyone from danger. I'm so proud of her. The Boss Support finally chimed in afterwards, sinking 1 of 2 He-class transport ships, the other one taken down by Kitakami. The PT imps fell in the day battle, but the Boss managed to chuuha both Shigure and Maya. I was then worried again: What if Maya couldn't deal the finishing blow because she was chuuha'd? It would be yet another frustratingly close encounter. The night battle began. Sendai and Yuudachi started off strong, but Kitakami's cut in failed to trigger (Goddamnit, Kitakami). It was then left to the 3 chuuha'd ships to muster all they had. Fubuki and Shigure dealt barely any damage, but Maya held up her role as the anchor and critted the Boss to the bottom of the sea. Finally. E-2 Cleared. Hatsuzuki GET. A fourth medal (blueprint anyone?), screws, and utter joy. Maya really pulled through in the night battle, but I have to say: Fubuki, you da real MVP. She saved everyone's butts twice and pulled through the whole sortie in chuuha'd state. That's some anime worthy plot material. With that, I can start planning my farming operations. I sent an expedition for a 'Foreign fleet review' and got an exclusive gun as a reward, which was neat! It has such a long range too. I'm not sure if I want to properly engage E3 to clear, because my holiday is coming to an end. In any case when school reopens, I can spare some time to farm E1 and E2. I'll drop the difficulty to Easy for E3 and test the waters tomorrow. Day 11 (20th February) Sortie activity has really slowed down ever since school started. I decided not to attempt E3 due to the likelihood that it would be a huge undertaking to complete, plus the reviews of Zara made it seem like it wasn't a worthwile reward. Also, most of the ships which I am interested in getting (Akizuki, Akashi and Amagi) are all in E2. I was actually only galvanised into action when my friend got Akashi. On his first few runs too, what a lucky admiral!! Isn't it a >1% chance? That's just insane! So I tried to farm too. So far I've sortied 12 times, and I haven't had any major successes yet. However, I have picked up some ships which are useful in the long term, namely Harusame, Makigumo and Yuugumo. I even got Urakaze, which was AWESOME. Therefore, I'm not feeling awfully salty just yet with all these little successes so far. Morale is still good, despite Ooi getting taiha'd by Hoppo at Node I (bluh). I'm not hoping too hard for Amagi to be honest, as I know my current fleet won't have it easy clearing the boss. The last dance formation has only showed up once, and through some bad RNG I was unable to clear the mooks in day battle, so I ended up getting an A rank when the S rank really counted. Oh well. Day 12 (21st February) Just past midnight. I got Amatsukaze. Post Event Debriefing There's the initial stats. I'm proud of the fact that I have successfully completed both E1 and E2 on medium difficulty, which means I got a reward ship, Hatsuzuki! I also picked up a lot of useful destroyers along the way, if only for their equipment at kai. This event has proven to be much more successful than Fall. I met more of my primary goals in obtaining Hatsuzuki and Okinami, as well as achieved some of my secondary and opportunity goals by getting Amatsukaze and Ooyodo! I could not retrieve Akizuki and Akashi in time though, which is slightly disappointing. That's okay, I already have an Akizuki-class to work with, and Akashi drops at 2-5. Though the rate is abysmally low, it's still possible... In any case, now's the time for some celebratory (or salt-inducing) LSC. I can now start planning my next moves for Spring 2016: 1. I forsee having less and less time to prepare for the next event, so resource-wise, I shouldn't go crazy with the LSC. I'll get back to expeditions soon after all the post-event fuss has died out. 2. Ditto, but in terms of ship leveling I should definitely just focus on bringing more CLs, CAs and DDs to the new range of Level 50-60. As for the trophy ships, getting them to Kai should be enough. 3. Looking to Kai-Ni some deserving ships, such as Shigure, Fubuki, Jintsuu, and the Kongou class if I can help it. I also have enough medals for a blueprint. Hmm, who should I give it to? Category:Blog posts